Send me, sealed with a kiss, borne across tumultuous seas. Test my love to the limits and beyond, through the brine and the shingle, the hail and thunder that shakes a furious sky with the wrath of the gods. Test me and never once, shall I be found wanting. Test me twice and never once shall I complain. Test me thrice and never once shall I leave you upon this desolate, accursed plain. Just bottle me up and I will find my way back to you, and you to me, and the world will settle into place with a jarringly beauteous clarity. Never again will we have to wonder, never again will our hearts yearn and our hands twist, displaced from one another’s warm embrace. Find me, my love. Find home.
Autumn Walks
Grace
Looking out across the verdant fields I can almost believe that everything is perfect. That I am peaceful. That life is fair.
Slowly the sun kisses the horizon, spreading wings of warmth and honey-coloured light like a new-born butterfly. Born to fly – to flutter past joyous youths and golden retirees. Born to die – in a week or a year but careless of this fact. Its own mortality does not trouble the butterfly for it knows one thing we do not ; that change is natural – from caterpillar to butterfly, from life to death – to a butterfly it is simply that – change – metamorphosis. For a butterfly slipping from one state to another, from one form into the next is as simple as shedding a skin.
Desperately I attempt to cling to this thought and, for a moment, it works. A subtle glow infuses my body as I gaze upon the serene beauty surrounding me.
“Grace”.
My illusion shatters into a thousand tiny daggers, leaving me defenseless before him. Reluctantly I turn, clinging to the ragged window edge for support. Sinuous splinters dig into palm as I face him.
“We just have to go over this one more time,” he promises. “After all we wouldn’t want you to get hurt.” A sinister twisting of his face produces a smile – one I can almost believe.
Just one more time. I repeat those words in my head until they turn into a self-made promise. Just one more time. And then I’ll escape. Like a butterfly I’ll shed my suffocating cocoon and metamorphosize into someone new, someone free, someone beautiful.
Just one more time.
Ink Blots 